Archive for January, 2009

January 31st, 2009

Are we loathsome?

The Beast has published their annual list of the 50 most loathsome people in America. As always it’s extremely funny but thought-provoking as well. I doubt you’ll agree with every entry, I didn’t. But it’s hard to deny their substantiation has merit. Perhaps the most compelling entry is this:

43. You

Charges:You think it’s your patriotic duty to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need. You think Hillary lost because of sexism, when it’s actually because she’s just a bad liar. You think Iraq is better off now than before we invaded, and don’t understand why they’re so ungrateful. You think Tim Russert was a great journalist. You’re hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of piss compared to a Wall Street heist of galactic dimensions, due to a housing crash you somehow have blamed on minorities. It took you six years to figure out what a tool Bush is, but you think Obama will make it all better. You deem it hunky dory that we conduct national policy debates via 8-second clips from “The View.” You think God zapped humans into existence a few thousand years ago, although your appendix and wisdom teeth disagree. You like watching vicious assholes insult each other on TV. You support gun rights, because firing one gives you a chubby. You cuddle falsehoods and resent enlightenment. You think the fact that 43% of whites could stomach voting for an incredibly charismatic and eloquent light-skinned black guy who was raised by white people means racism is over. You think progressive taxation is socialism. 1 in 100 of you are in jail, and you think it should be more. You are shallow, inconsiderate, afraid, brand-conscious, sedentary, and totally self-obsessed. You are American.

It may have been intended as humor, but I’d say it gives all Americans something to consider and not just reject out-of-hand.

January 27th, 2009

You’re an idiot

I moderate a debate forum that’s reasonably active, usually anywhere from 10-30 people logged in at any time. One of the members, one who has been around for a while and has posted frequently, posted the following comment to another member.

“HeyU, you’re an idiot.”

I’m not providing too much context because not much is necessary to grasp the inappropriateness of this comment. This was posted by an atheist directed toward a theist (religion is always a “hot” topic) in a privately owned forum open to registered users. Anyone can register, but all have to agree to a TOA that spells out the rules and structure of the forum. They have to agree to this in order to register. The first and second rules are: 1) No threats, personal insults or attacks. 2) Respect other opinions. I think #1 is rather self-explanatory.

You can’t call someone an idiot. You can think they’re an idiot. You can treat them like an idiot, explaining everything in small, short words in an overly-gratuitous manner. The British in the 30s and 40s perfected the art being outrageously disrespectful in the most gracious manner. But it’s a rare breed that can pull that attitude off successfully online. A textual environment is a context, and within different social contexts there are different rules, different expectations. Join a chatroom and immediately start hawking software for sale and see what happens. Do it on the street and the rules are different. Do it in front of a Fry’s and you’ll likely ring a few sales. forum

So the pertinent context is: uttering an insult in a private forum in violation of acknowledged rules. I sent the following warning.

What were you thinking? You know the rules. You know how to debate (I suspect). You know you can’t say this to another member.

This isn’t a bully pulpit, it’s a debate forum with rules and procedures. I don’t really care what you think of any other member of Volconvo. Your personal assessment of HeyU has no bearing on any debate here. Negative personal comments are always and completely off topic.

Your inability to be civil and participate within a defined structure is well understood by the mods and I would presume to you as well. At the moment your participation in the forum is more troublesome than constructive. I’d truly like to see that change. You have the potential to be a knowledgeable spokesman for your values, beliefs and opinions. In a live debate your style would be totally appropriate. But in this context it’s disruptive and distracting. I miss reading a lot of your content because I’m busy chuckling over your latest barb, some often deserved skewing of pomposity. But just because I get a laugh from these witticisms that doesn’t mean I don’t also realize they violate the rules. I have one blog I write just to have an outlet for the frustration and incredulity I feel after reading some of the threads here. However, those emotional reactions to gross irrationality belong there, not here.

A forum is an exchange. If you elicit emotional reactions to your points, their emotions will over-ride their meager critical thinking skills and the wall goes up, the lights go out. And if you attack emotionally you’ll reap offense, which starts a cycle of attack/offense that is longer debate. I should know, I’ve started threads like that before and a couple got closed. I’m not perfect, but I do try to have control over my emotions and argue opinions. I try my best to ignore who I’m responding to, preferring to quote the words and rebut only them.

So please, from someone who appreciates what you have to say but insists that it be said in accordance with the rules…chill. Write a blog about it. Get it out of your system. There are all kinds of places on the internet where you can say what you want any way you want, but this forum is the owner’s place on the web. His rules apply. We have to respect them, he has the means to enforce a rather final penalty on those who refuse to abide by them. And we agreed to abide with that when we registered. The TOA are a binding contract.

I’ve been a mod for quite a few years now on various forums. One of the first lessons I learned is that you cannot excuse rule violations just because you agree with the opinion expressed by the violator. I was a cop for a couple of years. I was a horrible cop, but the one way I was good was that I never took sides or offense when dealing with the public. Most of the encounters were emotional, and you had to over-ride emotion with reason and calmness. If you get excited, they become hysterical. It’s a pointless and sometimes dangerous escalation. And it’s counter-productive. So I learned not to do that. I release the frustration in some safe, legal way.

So: I may agree with most of what you say, but I’m not going to let that influence my enforcement of the rules any more than if I violently disagreed with you.

So what say you?

January 18th, 2009

Comment Platforms – A challenge to compare

As soon as I installed TweetDeck on my Linux partition today and fired it up, I noticed a Twitter reply from December 16th I hadn’t noticed before. So first I’ll apologize to db0 for my inattentiveness and now I’ll get to the substance of his Tweet.

Here is db0’s challenge:

But of course that’s not a proper reason and I think it’s time for me to actually write  in detail why I preferred one over the other. And since I’m doing that, I thought I might as well make this my first meme and perhaps trigger others to explain for themselves why they use their current choice. This will hopefully create a body of opinions which might give bloggers enough information about each option from all sides of the argument, to make an informed decision.

So the rules of the Comment Wars meme are the following:

  1. Declare which system you prefer and perhaps give a short history of your decision.
  2. List the reasons of why you prefer you current system choice over the direct competitor (If you’re using IDC, your competitor is Disqus and the other way around).
  3. (Optionally) list the reasons why you prefer your current system over your blog’s default comment system (Wordpress, Blogger or Typepad most likely). If you’re still using your default system, instead list the reasons why you consider it superior to both IDC and Disqus.
  4. Link to the person who tagged you for this meme.
  5. Link to any other people who are using any third-party comment system of whom you care to know why they chose as they did.  You can also link to any people who are still using the built-in comment system and you want to know why. Make sure to leave them a comment or send an email to inform them that they have been tagged.

The commenting systems in question are Disqus, Intense Debate and the built-in commenting structure of Word Press/Blogger/What_have_you. I use Disqus on this blog (and on most the blogs I’ve created) and Intense Debate on one other. I don’t rely on WP’s built-in commenting option on any blog except one with wordpress.com. comments

Ironically, I installed Intense Debate on that one site because I was hoping for a lot of, well, intense debate. I figured Disqus could handle the volume of comments I anticipated on my other blogs, especially this one. I like to think I’m far more controversial over there than I am here. Instead this blog has garnered far more comments than the one with ID installed.

I have StumbleUpon and it’s devotees (addicts?) to thank for that. Most of my traffic here comes from SU. Since neither of tem are tech blogs or gadget blogs, my comments will never make a dent on Digg or Techmeme. StumbleUpon is Digg for blogs that address society or philosophy. StumbleUpon is also similar to crack cocaine. Once you start clicking that damned “Stumble” button…

I appreciate the differences between IntenseDebate (ID) and Disqus, both have their strengths and weaknesses. The dashboard for ID offers more options than Disqus’ interface. But I find I’m not using the extra options much. Disqus’ simpler dashboard allows me to do everything I need it for on a regular basis. Since both allow me to reply by email, I often don’t notice which system I’m using, since to me it’s Google’s Gmail interface. Gmail provides organization by threading the comments better than either ID or Disqus.

They both integrate into the WP backend pretty much the same. I don’t read or write comments via cell phone, so how well they do that, I don’t know. It’s not a factor.

Seeing as how I get far fewer comments than db0 or vjack do, I’m not the most informed person to judge these two services. They both work about the same for me and I prefer both of them to the built-in comments. I also don’t need the advanced features available, so they’re pretty much wasted on me.  A lot is wasted on me. And I get wasted a lot. That’s how I maintain balance in my life. Zen, you know.

I haven’t a clue who among other bloggers I know well enough to tag (those I suspect may read this whole post and see themselves mentioned) would be interested in debating this issue. So if you’ve read this far and have an opinion on this topic, join in and consider yourself tagged.

January 17th, 2009

Our world may be a giant hologram

For the past seven years, this German set-up has been looking for gravitational waves – ripples in space-time thrown off by super-dense astronomical objects such as neutron stars and black holes. GEO600 has not detected any gravitational waves so far, but it might inadvertently have made the most important discovery in physics for half a century.

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time – the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into “grains”, just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. “It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time,” says Hogan.

(Image: Wolfgang Filser / Max Planck Society)

(Image: Wolfgang Filser / Max Planck Society)

If this doesn’t blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab’s Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: “If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram.”

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard ‘t Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

The “holographic principle” challenges our sensibilities. It seems hard to believe that you woke up, brushed your teeth and are reading this article because of something happening on the boundary of the universe. No one knows what it would mean for us if we really do live in a hologram, yet theorists have good reasons to believe that many aspects of the holographic principle are true.

However Danzmann is cautious about Hogan’s proposal and believes more theoretical work needs to be done. “It’s intriguing,” he says. “But it’s not really a theory yet, more just an idea.” Like many others, Danzmann agrees it is too early to make any definitive claims. “Let’s wait and see,” he says. “We think it’s at least a year too early to get excited.”

So what would it mean it if holographic noise has been found? Cramer likens it to the discovery of unexpected noise by an antenna at Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1964. That noise turned out to be the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang fireball. “Not only did it earn Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson a Nobel prize, but it confirmed the big bang and opened up a whole field of cosmology,” says Cramer.

Hogan is more specific. “Forget Quantum of Solace, we would have directly observed the quantum of time,” says Hogan. “It’s the smallest possible interval of time – the Planck length divided by the speed of light.”

More importantly, confirming the holographic principle would be a big help to researchers trying to unite quantum mechanics and Einstein’s theory of gravity. Today the most popular approach to quantum gravity is string theory, which researchers hope could describe happenings in the universe at the most fundamental level. But it is not the only show in town. “Holographic space-time is used in certain approaches to quantising gravity that have a strong connection to string theory,” says Cramer. “Consequently, some quantum gravity theories might be falsified and others reinforced.”

Hogan agrees that if the holographic principle is confirmed, it rules out all approaches to quantum gravity that do not incorporate the holographic principle. Conversely, it would be a boost for those that do – including some derived from string theory and something called matrix theory. “Ultimately, we may have our first indication of how space-time emerges out of quantum theory.” As serendipitous discoveries go, it’s hard to get more ground-breaking than that. (Source-NewScientist)

Let yourself dwell on the possibilities raised in this article over the weekend. Think about the ramifications of finding out that our view of reality may be completely in error due to our limited senses as you go about your chores and do your shopping. Can we ever hope to step outside our conditioned world view and perceive reality as it truly exists?

January 16th, 2009

Something to think freely about

P.Z. Myers and Daniel C. Dennett, in The Reality Club over at edge.org (H. Allen Orr for the defense), have penned rebuttals to Orr’s review of Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.You really should click over and read the whole interchange. Myers and Dennett are not at a loss for words, so it’s quite a lengthy though wonderfully erudite exchange of opinion.

By far I enjoyed the following, written by Myers, the most of any single paragraph or two.

Dawkins goes so far as to accuse those who conflate Einstein’s abstraction with the the kind of personal god worshipped by hundreds of millions of people of “intellectual high treason.” I don’t quite agree with that, but it certainly is intellectual foolishness. I like Orr’s work, I usually greatly enjoy his reviews, but in this case he is, perhaps unconsciously rather than deliberately, confusing the pantheistic cosmic force he is unnecessarily defending from Dawkins’ argument with the righteous anthropomorphic Supreme Being that is actually refuted.

p.z. myers

p.z. myers

And yes, I know it is the nature of religion that everyone who believes will automatically state that their god isn’t the complicated caricature of the Bible or the Torah or the Koran and will retreat to the safety of the Ineffable (but Simple) Pantheistic/Deistic God until the challenge from the atheist subsides. Once the critic is safely out of earshot, though, then they will pray to the fickle deity for the new raise or that their favorite football team will win, and they will wonder if the cruel Old Testament God will torture them for eternity for transgressions against antique laws of propriety. Until that atheist glances their way again  …  then once more, they will describe God as an abstraction, as Love, as something so nebulous that it is safely removed from any specific attack. It’s familiar territory. Get into an argument with someone over Christianity or Islam or any of the dominant monotheistic faiths, and you’ll see them flicker back and forth between the abstract and the real god of their religion — their only defense is to present a moving target.

I belong to a forum where debating religion is encouraged. What Myers describes is precisely how 95% of debates with theists go.

January 12th, 2009

The world’s only immortal animal

Turritopsis nutricula is a hydrozoan, and it’s considered by scientists to be the only animal that cheated death.

Solitary organisms are (according to current belief) doomed to die, after they completed their life cycle. Hydrozoa are a huge class of predatory animals that live mostly in saltwater, closely related to jellyfish and corals. Eggs and sperm from an adult jellyfish (medusa) and they then develop into polyp stage. Medusae evolve asexually from polyps.

Still, our Turritopsis nutricula managed to find a way to beat that. What these little folks do is they revert completely to a sexually immature, colonial stage after they reach sexual maturity. (Source-ZMEscience)

hydrozoa

I realize the article doesn’t go into enough depth on this, but suppose this behavior can be documented well enough to accept as plausible and possible. How does that impact our old belief that death comes to us all?

Death, the great equalizer. Nothing is certain but death and taxes. Death is the great reward, the deep sleep. For ages it has been the one certainty we could all agree on. We may not have the slightest clue what is going on in life, but we cannot deny that at the end of it all, every single living thing dies. Or does it?

Here’s a case where biology suggests a conflict between reality and the perception that every living thing dies. Maybe we’ve been wrong.

Isn’t it amazing that a simple polyp may possess the ability to do something that humans have wanted to be able to do for our entire history. A simple polyp can do something that religion has promised humanity since antiquity but never been able to bring to pass. All the promises, all the rewards, await us after death. We still all die. I think it’s safe to say that every person alive right now will die. But not this polyp.

On the other side of the aisle, how does this impact scientific presumptions? The presumption of death is pretty widespread. This might add a dimension to “life” that we have dismissed as impossible up to now.

Now that we understand how this process works, will we start to find other living things that practice immortality?

January 8th, 2009

Atheism or Agnosticism

There’s a great deal of confusion when it comes to defining ourselves as either atheists or agnostics. I frequently hear a person say, “Since I can’t honestly say that gods absolutely do not exist, I guess I’m an agnostic.” Yet they’ll readily confess that they have no belief in specific gods like the Christian or Muslim god.

They’re confused because too often we allow theists to define atheism according to their belief in absolutes. Since they absolutely believe their particular god exists, they assume that atheists must be just as absolute in their denial of the possibility of gods. They fail to appreciate that the only reason atheists don’t accept the arguments put forth by theists is because none of them are supported with any credible evidence. All they have to offer is faith, belief without substantive reason. Atheism doesn’t pretend to know that gods absolutely do not exist. We’re simply honest enough to admit the possibility of any god, let alone a specific god, existing as described by its followers is so improbable as to be statistically insignificant.

When it comes to definitions, I prefer to go with the reasoning put forth by the person who invented a word. ‘Agnostic’ was introduced by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869.

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain “gnosis”–had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion …

[Quoted in Encylopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 1908, edited by James Hastings MA DD]sir_thomas_henry_huxley

He also wrote,

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, ‘Try all things, hold fast by that which is good’; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic faith, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.

[" Agnosticism," 1889]

Atheism is, I think, rather clearly the lack of belief in gods, period. Since I lack a belief in gods, I can reasonably describe myself as an atheist. Yet in the pursuit of knowledge I employ and endorse agnosticism and skepticism. So I’m an agnostic in the quest for knowledge, but an atheist when it comes to belief in gods. I’m also an aNellyist when it comes to belief in the Loch Ness Monster and an aYetiist when it comes to belief in Big Foot.

January 4th, 2009

U.K citizens…please enable remote desktop

If that last post doesn’t make you wonder if George Orwell only erred in the year he selected for his title, read on…

THE Home Office has quietly adopted a new plan to allow police across Britain routinely to hack into people’s personal computers without a warrant.

The move, which follows a decision by the European Union’s council of ministers in Brussels, has angered civil liberties groups and opposition MPs. They described it as a sinister extension of the surveillance state which drives “a coach and horses” through privacy laws.

The hacking is known as “remote searching”. It allows police or MI5 officers who may be hundreds of miles away to examine covertly the hard drive of someone’s PC at his home, office or hotel room.

Material gathered in this way includes the content of all e-mails, web-browsing habits and instant messaging.

Under the Brussels edict, police across the EU have been given the green light to expand the implementation of a rarely used power involving warrantless intrusive surveillance of private property. The strategy will allow French, German and other EU forces to ask British officers to hack into someone’s UK computer and pass over any material gleaned.

A remote search can be granted if a senior officer says he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime — defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years. (Source-The Times Online)computerchaineddown

If any of my readers would like advice on securing your computer and/or home network against unwanted intrusion or wiping your hard drive to military specifications, let me know in the comments. Without knowing what resources the governemt currently employ I can’t guarantee absolute security, but I’m willing to bet too many of you are making it far too easy for the government to snoop on your personal computer.

Any trace of even deleted porn, warez or pirated music and movies can be detected by means available to anyone, let alone the government. Even if you think you have nothing to hide, even if you seriously think this will help the police nab criminals or terrorists, you should still be concerned over the rapid loss of our rights to privacy. Soon they’ll be asking, nicely I’m sure, that everyone wear transponding devices (”we can make it look just like fashion jewellery!”) so that the government can know where you are and what you’re doing 24/7. What better way to make sure those rotten criminals and terrorists don’t bother you anymore.

January 4th, 2009

A personal information hellhouse

The private sector will be asked to manage and run a communications database that will keep track of everyone’s calls, emails, texts and internet use under a key option contained in a consultation paper to be published next month by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.

A cabinet decision to put the management of the multibillion pound database of all UK communications traffic into private hands would be accompanied by tougher legal safeguards to guarantee against leaks and accidental data losses.

But in his strongest criticism yet of the superdatabase, Sir Ken Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, who has firsthand experience of working with intelligence and law enforcement agencies, told the Guardian such assurances would prove worthless in the long run and warned it would prove a “hellhouse” of personal private information.

The home secretary postponed the introduction of legislation to set up the superdatabase in October and instead said she would publish a consultation paper in the new year setting out the proposal and the safeguards needed to protect civil liberties. She has emphasised that communications data, which gives the police the identity and location of the caller, texter or web surfer but not the content, has been used as important evidence in 95% of serious crime cases and almost all security service operations since 2004 including the Soham and 21/7 bombing cases.

Until now most communications traffic data has been held by phone companies and internet service providers for billing purposes but the growth of broadband phone services, chatrooms and anonymous online identities mean that is no longer the case.

The Home Office’s interception modernisation programme, which is working on the superdatabase proposal, argues that it is no longer good enough for communications companies to be left to retrieve such data when requested by the police and intelligence services. A Home Office spokeswoman said last night the changes were needed so law enforcement agencies could maintain their ability to tackle serious crime and terrorism.

External estimates of the cost of the superdatabase have been put as high as £12bn, twice the cost of the ID cards scheme, and the consultation paper, to be published towards the end of next month, will include an option of putting it into the hands of the private sector in an effort to cut costs. But such a decision is likely to fuel civil liberties concerns over data losses and leaks. Macdonald, who left his post as DPP in October, told the Guardian: “The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people.”

Maintaining the capacity to intercept suspicious communications was critical in an increasingly complex world, he said. “It is a process which can save lives and bring criminals to justice. But no other country is considering such a drastic step. This database would be an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information,” he said. “It would be a complete readout of every citizen’s life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls.”

The moment there was a security crisis the temptation for more commonplace access would be irresistible, he said. (Source-The Guardian)

How afraid of becoming a victim of crime does a person have to have to endorse the wholescale undermining of personal rights and freedoms?

Thanks to press coverage of every little incident of criminal activity and the government’s continued efforts to make its citizens feel vulnerable and frightened, people seem to be developing the perception that crime is rampant and there are terrorists in every neighborhood. We are being encouraged to allow the government to employ draconian measures to protect us from a threat they can’t seem to substantiate.

Where are these hordes of terrorists? Has crime, measured per capita, really risen to unprecedented levels? intruder

Is there any guarantee that by surrendering our freedom to the government we are assured to never suffer another terrorist attack or that we’ll never be a victim of crime? Can they show a cost-benefit ratio that justifies their actions?

Thousands of people just lost their savings due to the scam perpetrated by Maddow. How will these actions prevent this sort of crime? Should we surrender control over our finances to the government so they can “protect” us from ponzi schemes and phishing sites? How much of our autonomy should we give up in order to feel a little safer, especially when that perception might be nothing more than an illusion?

I’m with Ben Franklin when he said, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”